Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprehension

Melissa Abate

I. Introduction

Vocabulary acquisition is an integral part of becoming a successful reader. Many studies have found a direct correlation between vocabulary and reading comprehension (Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000). That is to say, students who have a wider vocabulary, generally demonstrate better comprehension of text. Researchers have sought answers to some of the most basic questions such as: when is a word known, how many words do children learn each year, and what is the most effective method of vocabulary instruction. However, debate continues regarding many of the issues of vocabulary acquisition.

This review of research articles examines why some students have wider vocabulary than others (socioeconomic status, maternal speech, working memory), methodology/strategies which promote vocabulary acquisition (setting a purpose for reading, active storybook reading, electronic books, repeated readings, morphological analysis), and differences between high ability readers and low ability readers as they relate to vocabulary acquisition.  

II. Effects of Socioeconomic Status

Erika Hoff (2003) found that a family’s socioeconomic status (“SES”) is a powerful predictor of many aspects of child development. Her hypothesis was that “maternal speech mediates the relation between SES and child vocabulary development.” 

Sixty-three mothers and children were drawn from two socioeconomic strata.  There were 33 high-SES families in which both parents were college educated and, if employed, worked in professional or managerial positions.  There were 30 mid-SES families in which both parents were high school educated but had no education beyond high school other than technical training, and if employed, worked in unskilled, semiskilled, or service positions. (p. 1369).

Furthermore, “the database consisted of transcripts of the conversations that occurred during video recorded interactions between the mothers and their children. The conversations were recorded in the particpants’ homes as the mothers got their children dressed for the day, fed them breakfast, and played with an experimenter-provided set of toys.” (p. 1370). The results of the experiment showed that the “high-SES mothers produced more utterances, more word tokens, and more word types; had higher MLUs [(maternal length of utterances)]; and produced more topic-continuing replies to their children than did the mid-SES mothers (p. 1372).  Hoff concluded that, “[t]he present findings demonstrate that the aspects of experience that support vocabulary acquisition are not equally available to children across socioeconomic strata.” (p. 1375). This research is particularly significant when considering the fact that “developed vocabulary size in kindergarten is an effective predictor of reading comprehension in the middle years.” ( Scarborough , 1988). In light of Hoff’s research, one must conclude that it is all the more important for schools to help bridge the gap between children from lower socioeconomic homes and those from higher socioeconomic homes. 

III. Maternal Lexical Influence

Weizman and Snow (2001) conducted research on the effects of maternal lexical input with 5-year-olds related to children’s vocabulary acquisition. The authors collected data beginning at age 3. They conducted annual home visits to interview parents/children and to elicit talk during specific types of tasks. The participants engaged in 5 specific tasks: toy play, magnet play, mealtime, information book, and storybook, where their language was noted and recorded. The families were all English speaking and were recruited from programs serving low-income children. According to the results, “children were exposed to 1, 073 word-types and only 19 sophisticated word-types.” (p. 271). That is, “1.77% of all word-types used by the mothers, on average, fell outside the core lexicon of the 3,000 most familiar words . . .” (p. 271). In summary, their findings indicated that “a child’s vocabulary performance at age 5 was linked strongly to early exposure to a greater number of sophisticated words used by the mother per 1,000 word-tokens. The child’s vocabulary performance was also linked to the frequency with which instructive or helpful interactions were provided by the mother.” (p. 277). They found that these relationships carried over into the early school years. Several implications for teachers can be drawn from this study. Lexical quantity, lexical sophistication, and conversational support are all factors that teachers should consider in their literacy interactions with young children. (p. 277). Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that in terms of lexical quantity, students benefit from a balanced literacy program (a wide variety of read-alouds, shared reading and writing, conversations regarding books and authors, etc.) Students especially benefit from the scaffolding of new vocabulary with graphic organizers, explicit definitions, synonyms, etc. The greater variety of words a teacher can use in her or his own speech, the greater the exposure students will have in their classrooms to a wide-range of sophisticated words. 

IV. Read Alouds

Biemiller and Boote (2006) assert that “educators’ chances of successfully addressing vocabulary differences in school are greatest in the preschool and early primary years.” (p. 45). In their study, they examine three factors that might affect word acquisition: the effect of pre-testing, reading books two or four times, and word explanations.  In reference to pre-testing, they thought, “this procedure might sensitize children to words appearing in a story and thus be a useful tool for fostering vocabulary growth.” (p. 47). The study was conducted in a publicly supported Catholic school system in Toronto, Canada, comprised of a total of 43 kindergarten, 37 Grade 1, and 32 Grade 2 children. The authors of the study then collaborated with teachers and the school librarian to choose three narrative fiction books. In each grade, the two classroom teachers read the books and provided word explanations. (p. 47). The researchers then chose “[t]welve word meanings from each book read twice and 24 word meanings from the book read four times . . . ” (p. 47). 

According to the author’s statistical analysis, pretest-posttest gains were 22% for instructed words and 12% for non-instructed words. Therefore, an additional 10% gain occurred when word meanings were instructed in addition to repeated reading. (p. 50).  Significantly, the older children in the study did not receive major gains when materials were read two versus four times. In contrast, however, kindergarteners experienced higher gains when read to four times than first or second graders. Lastly, there was no difference between pre-tested and non-pre-tested words. 

Hence, this study emphasizes the importance of teacher/student interaction with the text. Children obviously benefit from an explicit definition of the word. In their own classroom, teachers can offer synonyms for the word, use the word in a sentence, and relate the word to something that students already know in order to fit the new words into students’ existing schema. 

Similar to the benefit that students receive when an adult assists them with an unknown word, Ewers and Brownson (1999) found that the more teachers interacted with a read aloud, the better students acquired target word vocabulary. In this study, the sample was comprised of sixty-six kindergarten children from suburban schools in central New York . The book Just in Passing (Bonners, 1989) was read to each child individually. In the active participation group, “the reader asked a what or where question immediately after each sentence containing a target word.” (p. 15). In the passive group, the reader rephrased the sentence using a synonym for the target word, but the participants were not asked to respond in any way.  

The researchers also examined the effect of working memory and high or low vocabulary (students were separated into groups with a high or low working memory/high or low vocabulary and then randomly assigned to the active or passive group.) The results revealed that high vocabulary participants acquired more targeted words than low vocabulary participants. In addition, both high and low memory children in the active participation group acquired significantly more target words than their counterparts in the passive participation group. Interestingly, in this study, children with a higher working memory did not acquire more vocabulary words than those with a lower working memory.  Ewers and Brownson concluded that “the use of what/where questions served to focus the listener’s attention on novel items and provided a stronger semantic linkage between short-term storage.” (p. 17).  It is apparent that the use of scaffolding techniques such as those the authors used (oral techniques, multiple repetitions, and explanations) is integral to the ability of children to acquire new vocabulary words. 

Brabham and Lynch-Brown completed a similar study concerning read-aloud styles (2002). They trained pre-service teachers to read books using three different styles: just reading, performance reading, and interactional reading. Their aim was to measure the statistical differences in effects of these three different styles for first and third graders and for vocabulary acquisition and comprehension. They used two books: Call me Ahnighito by Pam Conrad and Everglades by Jean Craighead George. The results were collected from 117 students in first grade and 129 students in third grade at a countywide system in the southeastern United States . “Across the two grade levels, there were 87 in just-reading, 79 in performance-reading, and 80 in interactional-reading groups.” (p. 3). A Vocabulary pre-test and a post-test were developed and administered, which consisted of 40 multiple-choice items based on 20 vocabulary words from each of the two informational storybooks. 

As a result of their research, the authors found that just reading produced the smallest vocabulary gains with greater gains for performance reading and the greatest gains for interactional reading. They also found that vocabulary acquisition was facilitated most by interactional reading aloud. Lastly, there were no statistically significant differences in comprehension produced by the three different styles. 

The above research should not be surprising, as most elementary school teachers would agree that the majority of students love read-alouds. They are eager to participate by relating something that happened in the book to their own life, commenting on pictures, and/or asking questions. It would be prudent of teachers to capitalize on this enthusiasm by instigating discussion before, during, and after the text. Discussion might include introducing students to unfamiliar vocabulary, theme, plot, or characters in the book. As this study proves, students will extract more from a text with the scaffolding a teaching professional can provide.

V. Alternative Methods

A.  Electronic Books

In addition to read-alouds and other traditional vocabulary teaching methods, one reading activity that teachers might consider using in their classrooms to develop students’ vocabulary is electronic books. Higgins and Hess (2000) studied the effectiveness of electronic books and vocabulary acquisition. They worked with a class of 22 third-grade children from a middle-class suburban elementary school. Students viewed an e-book on Jack Prelutsky’s poems. The researcher showed students an animation feature after listening to a computer read a page; this feature was to help explain target words that might be unknown to the child. The control group read the book and used the animation feature, but did not receive any extra help from the researcher. The experimental group viewed the same book, however, when a student could not define a target word, even after the animation feature was used, the researcher aided the student in three ways. S/he “defined the word, gave a synonym for the word, then questioned them using the word.” (p. 427).  The results “revealed that the difference between the control and experimental groups was statistically significant.” (p. 428). Four of the 11 children in the experimental group were able to define all six of the target words on the post-test, whereas none of the children in the control group were able to define all six words on the post-test. 

As the authors of this study pointed out, the appeal of using e-books is that they require no special teaching skills or knowledge, and provide a useful supplement to classroom instruction. For example, by using this technology an aide or a parent volunteer would easily be able to sit with a student one-on-one to provide assistance with vocabulary. This activity would also work well in a resource room, where a child is pulled out for special services. Considering the fact that lower readers usually have a smaller vocabulary, this activity might be a beneficial way to begin to build up her or his vocabulary knowledge.

B.  Vocabulary Self Collection Strategy

Ruddell and Shearer (2002) also examined an alternative teaching method with the Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy (VSS), whereby students are asked to choose their own vocabulary words. The authors provided the following description of the study:

The study was conducted for one semester in a small, Midwestern U.S. rural community during the 1998-1999 school year.  The study involved three classes of middle school students enrolled in an intensive 45-minute daily reading intervention program.  Classes consisted of one group of six students in seventh grade, one group of five students in eight grade, and one group of six students in eighth grade.  All 17 participants were Caucasian, representative of the predominantly white, middle-class composition of the community.  All were reading 2 to 4 years below grade level at the beginning of the school year as measured by the Woodcock-Johnson Pschyo-Educational Battery .  The study documented the vocabulary development of these students as they engaged in the systematic use of the Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy (VSS) as one component of the intervention.

(Ruddell and Shearer, 2002, at *3). The article continues to explain that under this program:

Each student selected one word per week (on Mondays) that he or she wanted to study and nominated it for the class list.  The students were allowed to select words from any source including content classes, academic or recreational reading, television, conversations, popular music, or anywhere else they encountered a word that was important to them.  In the nomination process, students told (a) where they found their word, (b) what they thought it meant, and (c) why they thought it should be on the class list.  The teacher also nominated a word each week and supplied the same rationale information.  As the class decided on its final list of words for the week, definitions were refined through discussion, and when appropriate, through additional reference to a dictionary or other source.  When final definitions were established, students recorded the words and the definitions in their vocabulary journals.  Vocabulary study during the week included discussion, semantic mapping, semantic feature analysis, and other interactive word activities.  At the end of each week, students were tested on their ability to spell each word, explain its meaning, and write a meaningful sentence using the word.  Every 3 weeks each class devoted a portion of instructional time to reviewing past word lists, and students were tested on five words randomly selected from the weekly lists.

(Ruddell and Shearer, 2002, at *3).  The students appeared to meet with great success according to the results of their study. 

The “VSS tests yielded an overall mean of 94% correct; the weekly spelling test scores averaged 76% correct.” (p. 5). “A 9-week comparison of means of students’ scores on weekly VSS scores and on weekly spelling test scores in language arts class confirmed that students performed statistically significantly better on VSS lists than on the lists from the curriculum.” (p. 5). The authors assert that “[t]hese data support VSS as an effective means for vocabulary development.” (p. 5). It appears that the fact that students were invested in their own learning accounted for their overall success in their vocabulary acquisition. 

Although Ruddell and Shearer do not make note of it in their article, their study appears to support Maria Montessori’s philosophy of self-directed learning.  Montessori once stated, “[t]he essential thing is to arouse such an interest that it engages the whole child’s personality.”  With the opportunity to direct one’s own learning, combined with direct instruction from the teacher, VSS should be heralded as a model vocabulary instruction program.

VI. Sequence and Methods of Instruction

The research of Biemiller and Slonim (2001) point to other strategies teachers can employ to develop their students’ vocabulary, such as implementing a vocabulary sequence of instruction in the elementary years.  In this study, English-speaking children from three schools in a mid-sized Ontario city were tested.  The sample included students from assisted housing, working-class and middle-class families.  They tested eight children from each school in kindergarten, as well as Grades 1, 2, 4, and 5.  Based on their results, they found that there was an unusually large gain in root words between Grade 1 and 2, albeit relatively slower growth in root word vocabulary between the end of Grade 2 and Grade 6.  In addition, they determined that children acquire root words at an average rate of 2.2 per day from 1 year of age to the end of Grade 2 and a greater rate—2.9 words per day—during Grades 3 to 5.  (p. 508). 

Unfortunately, they also discovered that large differences in root word vocabulary had occurred by Grade 2.  “The mean for the lowest quartile was 4,100 less than the mean for the highest quartile in the normative sample and 3,600 less in the advantaged sample.”  (p. 508).  In any case, these children appeared to learn the target words based on Living Word Language levels in a fixed order.  The authors believe it would be “reasonable to define bodies of vocabulary that should be largely known by certain grades, or better, by points in a curriculum.”  (p. 510).  They assert that by the end of Grade 2, average children understand most Level 2 words, about half of Level 4 words, and about a third of Level 6 words from the LWV.  Therefore, they conclude that “it would be worth trying to bring most children to this level of vocabulary achievement.”  (p. 510). 

Based on the research of Biemiller and Slonim, there appears to be a need for a more “teacher-centered” approach to vocabulary development.  Vocabulary instruction can be woven into the daily literacy instruction through word work, spelling reviews, word webs, or read-alouds.  The difficulty lies in making teachers more aware of the benefits of vocabulary instruction and the impact it has on reading comprehension.

Juel and Defies (2004) advocate teaching vocabulary in a variety of rich contexts, which they call “anchored instruction.”  This might include instructing students on a word’s pronunciation, spelling, syntax, morphology, and definition.  For example, when a new word is encountered in a read-aloud, the teacher might discuss the word’s meaning, point out pictures in the book that illustrate the word, point to letters on a word card, “grab” the last sound in the word and write it in the air, and have students sound out the word.  In this way, the teacher is linking spelling, meaning, and sound. 

To test vocabulary acquisition under this theory, Juel and Defies designed a six-week study comparing three different forms of vocabulary instruction (anchored word instruction, analytic word instruction, and context-based word instruction).  They had a sample size of 92 students from six kindergarten classrooms.  They pre-tested and post-tested students on targeted words using a researcher-designed vocabulary test.  They also tested students’ overall level of vocabulary knowledge (Test of Language Development) and letter-naming fluency (Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy Skills).  “To determine the relative effectiveness of each of the three conditions, they compared the pre-test scores, their overall vocabulary knowledge, their overall letter-naming fluency, and such characteristics as free or reduced-price lunch status and language background.” (p. 4)  They “found that the analytic and anchored conditions enabled students to learn the words in the curriculum more effectively than did the contextual condition, regardless of the students’ general vocabulary knowledge, letter-naming fluency, or background characteristics.”  (p. 4).  To be more precise, “the differences between the analytic and contextual conditions in terms of the adjusted means—46.33 compared with 36.87—and between the anchored and contextual conditions—47.53 compared with 36.87—are statistically significant, whereas the difference between the analytic and anchored conditions—46.33 and 47.53 respectively—is not.”  (p. 4). 

The authors would encourage teachers to follow up on a definition with a more in-depth analysis (e.g., if the target word is pond, then a teacher should compare ponds to lakes or oceans).  This may not always be reasonable to do during a read-aloud; children don’t often like continued interruption of a story.  However, the idea of teaching words in rich contexts is important because it provides an additional “memory hook by which students can access the word’s meaning and form.”  Therefore, using different angles to teach a word will provide more thorough and effective vocabulary instruction for students, especially those who are linguistically disadvantaged.

Not only do students benefit from a “multi-pronged” approach to vocabulary instruction, but they also benefit from encountering the word a number of times.  For example, Zahar, Cobb, and Spada (2001) examined the number of occurrences needed to learn a new word, if building a lexicon through reading was feasible, and what type of contextual support is necessary to learn a new word.  This study was carried out at a French-language high school for boys in Montreal , Canada , with 144 Grade 7 ESL students participating in the study.  Students were grouped into low or high readers (groups 1 through 5, with 5 being the highest) based on Nation’s (1990) Vocabulary Level Tests.  “Thirty words from The Golden Fleece of various frequency levels and numbers of occurrences in the text were chosen for the pre-test.”  (p. 4).  “Pre-test scores were analyzed to determine the mean score of each class for the entire test and to test the significance of differences between groups.”  (p. 4).  Thirteen days after the pre-test elapsed, Zahar, Cobb, and Spada began their experiment. 

All students “heard the story on cassette tape while they followed along simultaneously with the written text.”  (p. 4).  The post-test, which was the same as the pre-test, “was given two days later, in the next class meeting.”  (p. 4).  The researchers noticed a positive change in each group’s mean when they compared the pre-test to the post-test.  “The average number of words learned was 2.16 out of the 30 words that were tested.”  (p. 4).  “Group 5 learned the least in absolute terms . . . [although they] learned the most in terms of proportion of learning opportunity.”  (p. 5).  That is to say that there were only “3.45 words for these students to learn, of which they learned 1.48 or 43%.”   Group 2 learned the most words with an average of 3.03 words, however, the percentage gain was only 22.5%. 

In regard to the role of frequency, researchers collected data on the number of times each word appeared in the “text and the number of students from each group that learned [the word].” (p. 5).  It was found that frequency played a greater role in acquisition at the lowest level and plays a consistent lesser role with each higher level.  They deemed frequency to be “three to four times more important for beginners than it is for more advanced students.”  (p. 5).  In contrast, the authors found “no difference between the contextual informativeness of words learned by all participants and words learned by none.”  (p. 6). 

Zahar, Cobb, and Spada’s research correlates with many other studies in that it points to the special needs of lower-ability students.  It is apparent that they require more direct teaching, and greater opportunities in which to learn vocabulary than their higher-achieving peers.

Penno, Moore, and Wilkinson (2002) studied if vocabulary acquisition based on teacher explanation and repeated listening was able to overcome the Matthew Effect.[1]  In this study, the authors utilized two classrooms in a suburban school in Auckland , New Zealand containing a total of 47 children.[2]  Although not all children were English as-first-language speakers, the main language of instruction was English.  The teachers read two stories deemed to be above the students’ reading level: Anak the Brave (Ling, 1990) and No Place Like Home (Elliott, 1990).  These stories were read to the students, who were then asked to give a retelling.  The students’ vocabulary acquisition was assessed by a multiple choice pre-test and post-test and asking the students to retell the story.  (This measured both receptive and expressive language.)  The control group did not receive an explanation of the target words.  For the experimental group, researchers provided a synonym for the word, an explanation, and pointed to a picture to help explain the word’s meaning.  Researchers found that “receiving explanations significantly helped subjects’ use of the target words across the three reading-retellings of the story (M = 11.211) compared with not receiving explanations (M = 4.90).” (p. 29).  In addition, the higher ability children benefited more from successive readings-retellings than did the lower ability children.  The authors noted that “a combined approach to vocabulary instruction, providing both incidental leaning from the story context and contextually relevant direct instruction, is more beneficial than either in isolation.” (p. 31).  Ultimately, listening to stories did not overcome the Matthew effect, as the higher ability students in this study made greater vocabulary gains on both assessments.   

VII. Motivational Learning

One way teachers can increase vocabulary acquisition is by instructing students to read for a purpose.  Swanborn and deGlopper (2002) examined how reading texts for different purposes affected incidental word learning.  Nine, Dutch elementary schools participated in the experiment with a total of 223 sixth-graders, of which 96.4 percent were native Dutch speakers.  The study began with the students taking a standardized reading comprehension test to determine their ability.  Researchers then selected a relatively easy expository text about wolves for the experimental groups and a text about music for the control group.  They assigned student to one of four groups, each with a different purpose for reading such as free reading, to learn as much about the topic as possible, or to read for text comprehension.  The control group read another text with no specific reading purpose.  After students finished the book, researchers assessed their incidental vocabulary acquisition through written definitions of 15 target words.  (No mention of vocabulary was made prior to students reading the texts.)  According to the authors of this study, “proportions of words learned incidentally while reading ranged from .06 for free reading to .08 when reading for text comprehension to .10 when reading to learn about the topic.”

In addition, the authors found that the level of reading ability was a significant factor in all conditions.  The low-ability group did not make any significant progress in their knowledge of words no matter what their purpose for reading was.  The authors referred to previous research on reading comprehension (Smith, 1967), which found “low-ability readers were not able to adjust their reading strategies to meet the purpose required.” (p. 111).  They theorized that low readers may have too many decoding problems which prevent them from concentrating on their comprehension.  The average-ability group demonstrated significant gains when reading to learn more about the topic.  Lastly, the high-ability group learned more words in the free-reading purpose and the text-comprehension condition.  “Scores for all experimental groups were higher than for the control group.”  (p. 111).  The authors of the study made it a point to mention the effect of age on incidental word learning.  They found that older students learn more words incidentally than younger students.  Therefore, the numbers reported in their study were only valid for sixth-grade readers. 

One can conclude from this research that students benefit from setting a purpose prior to reading a text.  This can be as simple as taking a subtitle from an expository text and turning it into a question.  For example, if the subtitle of an expository text on wolves was “Caring For Young” the student could ask the question, “How do wolves care for their young?” Middle-age students should also be made aware of reading for different purposes depending on the genre.  In an expository text, students read for information; in a fictional text, students read to understand character, plot, theme, etc.

VIII.  Higher Readers v. Lower Readers

Cain, Oakhill, and Lemmon (2004) studied vocabulary acquisition with “skilled” comprehenders and “less skilled” comprehenders.  More specifically, they investigated, inter alia, whether skilled and less skilled comprehenders differ in their ability to infer the meanings of words from context.  The researchers wrote stories that contained context clues for the target words that were either close to the target word, or farther away from it.  They predicted that children with weak reading comprehension skills would not be able to identify as many words when the context clues were farther away from target word.  Along with this, an assessment of working memory capacity was taken.  They predicted that the less skilled group would obtain significantly lower scores on this measure as well.  Researchers worked with 12 skilled comprehenders and 13 less skilled comprehenders, all who attended urban schools on the south coast of England .  “The majority of participants were from lower-middle class families.”  (p. 3).  Children completed two separate tasks.  In the first one, they read two stories, one where the context clues were close to the target words, and one where the context clues were found after some additional filler sentences.  The tester asked each child what s/he thought the word might be and wrote down their responses verbatim.  In the working memory task, the tester read aloud sentences that were missing their final word.  Students needed to complete the sentence with a single word and remember that word for later recall.  Children completed three trials at three difficulty levels (three sentences, four sentences, and five sentences.)  The results revealed that, indeed, children with weak reading skills were less able to infer the meanings of novel vocabulary items from context than were their skilled peers.  The less skilled group’s performance was affected by the proximity of the useful context and the novel word.  They were much less likely to provide an appropriate meaning of the novel word when it was separated from the context by filler text.  The skilled group was not affected by this manipulation.  Contrary to their prediction, they found that working memory capacity and performance on the vocabulary inference task were not significantly correlated.  The authors did note that with only 25 participants in their study, their study lacked “power.” 

In this study, the children with weak reading skills had difficulty finding sentences providing context for a target word, especially if the sentence did not immediately follow the target word.  This is an example where teacher modeling would increase students’ ability to negotiate complex reading tasks.  Whereas a more skilled reader could make connections across the text, a lower ability reader might need explicit instruction in order to see how to connect different parts of the text.  Guided reading groups provide an ideal setting for working on such strategies because children can be grouped homogenously and receive more individual instruction from the teacher.

IX. Morphemic Awareness

Bertram, Laine, and Virkkala (2000) studied the role of morphology in vocabulary acquisition.  A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning: it may be a word, a compound, a prefix, a suffix, or a root.  (Gunning, 1992).  They point out that the context does not always give sufficient clues to determine the meaning of an unfamiliar word.  As Cain, Oakhill and Lemmon (2004) discovered, the context clues are not always found in close proximity to the unfamiliar word.  Therefore, Bertram, Laine, and Virkkala believe that “a more successful way to determine the meaning of many unfamiliar words could be to make us of a word’s morphological structure.” (p. 287).  Their purpose was to investigate whether children significantly benefited from morphological structure in determining the meaning of derived words by varying the frequency and productivity.  Researchers selected a group of 3rd and 6th graders from a Finnish elementary school (all were native speakers of Finnish).  Seventy target words were selected from a lexical database: 35 from the low-frequency range and 35 from the high-frequency range.  “Within each frequency range there were three different word types: derived words with a high-productive suffix, derived words with a low-productive suffix, and monomorphemic words.”  (p. 289).  To conduct the experiment, “each word was printed on a separate card and shown to the participants.”  (p. 291).  The word was also spoken aloud by the experimenter.  The children were instructed to give an oral definition of each word presented.  The results demonstrated that children’s definitions of high-frequency words were nearly twice as good as those of low-frequency words.  “Overall performance was poorest for the category for which no fall-back on morphology was possible . . . .”  (p. 292).  In both the low and high-frequency ranges, the “high-productive derivations elicited the best performance.”  (p. 292).  The authors conclude that the “general notion of [their] study is that children benefit greatly from utilizing morphology in determining word meaning.” (p. 294).  The teaching of prefixes, suffixes, and root words should be a considerable part of any vocabulary instruction.  Students can then use these skills independently when they come across an unfamiliar word in their reading.  Root words and affixes are even taught in preparatory SAT classes in order to improve a student’s lexicon.  The reasoning for this might be that although a student cannot possibly learn every word that might be encountered on the SAT, if they increase their morphological understanding, they can then apply it to words they might encounter on the assessment.  Younger readers can learn these same skills in order to improve their vocabulary acquisition, and subsequently, their reading comprehension.

X. Beliefs About Vocabulary

Francis and Simpson (2003) directed their research efforts towards students’ beliefs regarding vocabulary.  After reviewing prior studies, the authors posed four specific research questions:

1.  Is there a relation between students’ reading achievement and their beliefs about vocabulary knowledge?

2.  Is there a relation between students’ reading achievement and their performance on a vocabulary acquisition task?

3.  Is there a relation between students’ beliefs about vocabulary knowledge and their performance on a vocabulary acquisition task?

4.  Is there a difference between students with low reading achievement and those with high reading achievement in terms of their performance on a vocabulary acquisition task and their beliefs about vocabulary knowledge? (p.87).

To answer this question, the researchers questioned 110 participants from a southern university in the United States .  The first measure was the Nelson-Denny Reading Test, Form G (1993) which was used to “classify students as having high reading achievement (n = 51) and low reading achievement (n = 31).”(p. 68).  The second measure was the Vocabulary Beliefs Questionnaire (created by the researchers), an instrument designed to evaluate students’ beliefs about vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary acquisition.  The third measure used in this study was the Vocabulary Task (Nist & Olejnik, 1995), which examined students’ abilities to generate a clear sentence using the nonsense word in a personal context.

Based on their study, the authors “did not find evidence for a strong correlation between students’ beliefs about vocabulary knowledge and their performance on a standardized reading achievement measure.”  (p. 71).  “In terms of the second research questions, the analysis indicated that there was a moderate correlation between the students’ overall reading achievement scores and their scores on the Vocabulary Task.”  (p. 71-72).  Their “third research question examined whether any relationship existed between students’ beliefs about vocabulary and their performance on a task that measured different levels of work knowledge” (p. 72).  Based on the analysis, “there was not a strong correlation between students’ scores on the Vocabulary Beliefs Questionnaire and their scores on the Vocabulary Task” (p. 72).  The authors were surprised by these findings, however, they surmised that word learning was a “multifaceted construct that is extremely difficult to teach and evaluate.” For the last research question, they “had predicted that the students with higher reading-achievement scores would have deeper and more sophisticated beliefs about vocabulary knowledge and acquisition than the students with lower reading-achievement scores.  However, according to the results of the study, there was not a significant difference in [their] scores . . . .” (p. 72).  The authors reasoned that perhaps “students can score well on a standardized reading achievement test, yet they may not be able to describe what it means to know a word or how they acquire vocabulary knowledge because of the highly meta-cognitive nature of beliefs.”  (p. 72 citing Harmon, 1998). 

The authors offer several implications for teaching based on their results.  They recommend engaging students in a variety of meaningful oral expression activities, especially when they first encounter an unknown word.  The authors state that, “long before students are asked to generate sentences or complete written activities, teachers need to discuss the targeted words with their students, emphasizing the definitions, characteristics, synonyms, and antonyms.  This discussion allows teachers to hear and clarify students’ misunderstandings and questions about a word…” (p. 73).  Such practices support Louise Rosenblatt’s transactional theory (1978, 1994), which states:

Speech is a vital ingredient of transactional pedagogy.  It’s importance in the individual’s acquisition of a linguistic-experiential capital is clear.  Dialogue between teacher and students and interchange among students can foster growth and cross-fertilization in both reading and writing processes.  Such discussion can help students develop insights concerning transactions with texts as well as metalinguistic understanding of skills and convention in meaningful contexts. (Louise Rosenblatt, 1994, pp. 1082 – 1083).

Lastly, they recommend designing activities that encourage students’ deeper levels of understanding.  They note that “because most commercial materials rely on matching and multiple-choice formats that tap only surface-level word knowledge, teachers need to create activities that challenge students to think on deeper levels about words.”  (Francis and Simpson, at 74 (internal citation omitted)).  For example, “teaching students minimum differences will enable them to make finer discriminations for words that are similar in meaning.”  (Alber and Foil, 2003, pp. 26-27).  “Teachers can facilitate the use of minimum difference examples by creating a synonym chart.  The students and teacher can generate a list of synonyms for a new vocabulary word and discuss how each synonym has a slightly different meaning from the target word.  For example, the word separate and segregate are synonyms; however, the word segregate carries with it the connotation of racism and injustice because it is associated with civil rights violations in our recent history.  The word separate is a more neutral word that does not have much emotional impact.” (Alber and Foil, 2003).  Although the authors’ hypotheses were not all supported by the results of their study, the teacher implications are certainly relevant to the instruction of vocabulary.

XI. Conclusion

            The scope of this vocabulary review precludes the discussion of other important issues in regard to vocabulary acquisition.  Certainly, there are other areas that have not been covered in this review, such as vocabulary acquisition of students with a learning disability, vocabulary acquisition of ESL students, differences between urban populations and suburban populations, etc.  However, this review has addressed some of the essential aspects of vocabulary acquisition, such as maternal input, socioeconomic influence, the importance of read alouds, effective methods of instruction, the differences between higher ability students and lower ability students in relation to vocabulary acquisition, and students’ beliefs regarding vocabulary.  These studies have shed light on the implications for instruction of vocabulary.  It has become abundantly clear that lower ability students benefit from explicit instruction, repeated encounters with target words, and the opportunity for a variety of interactions with the word (spelling, morphological analysis, semantic mapping, etc.)  Read alouds are a vital part of developing vocabulary, especially with discussion before, during, and after the reading.  Morphological analysis is another way to help students increase their lexicon.  With root, prefix, and suffix knowledge at their disposal, students are able to independently learn a significant number of derivational words.  The demands on teachers today or enormous; with state testing, packed curricula, and large class sizes, it is difficult to expect them to spend a significant amount of time each day teaching vocabulary.  However, teachers can most certainly weave vocabulary instruction into their existing routines.  For example, target words can be chosen before a real aloud and discussed with students, guided reading groups might complete a semantic web to highlight target words in their reading book, and spelling lessons can include morphemic analysis.  It is this author’s hope that as teachers become more aware of the importance of vocabulary instruction, they will find ways to fit this type of instruction into their every day teaching. 

REFERENCES

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Francis, M.A. and Simpson, M.L (2003). Using Theory, our intuitions, and a research study to enhance students’vocabulary knowledge. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 47 (1), 66-78.

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Penno, J.F, Moore , D.W., & Wilkinson, I.A.G. (2002). Vocabulary Acquisition From Teacher Explanation and Repeated Listening to Stories: Do They Overcome The Matthew Effect? Journal of Educational Psychology, 94 (1), 23-33.

Ruddell, M.R. & Shearer, B.A. (2002). “Extraordinary,” “tremendous,” “exhilarating,” “magnificent”: middle school at-risk students become avid word learners with the Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy (VSS): asking students to choose their own vocabulary words maintains interest and builds connections with content areas. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 45 (5) p. 352-364.

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SECONDARY REFERENCES

Alber, S.A. & Foil, C.R. (2003). Drama Activities That Promote and Extend Your Students’ Vocabulary Proficiency. Intervention In School And Clinic, 39 (1), 22-29.

Gunning, T. (1992). Creating Reading Instruction For All Children. Boston : Allyn and Bacon.

Wren, S. (2003). “Developing Research-Based Resources for the Balanced Reading Teacher.” <www.balancedliteracy.com>